


The Des Moines Public Library - October 7, 2003

by leyley09



Series: Somewhere You Exist [2]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Bonus Material, Gen, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 12:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15908562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leyley09/pseuds/leyley09
Summary: So you wanted to know what happened in the library that made Pete act so weird?_________Bonus Scene for "Somewhere You Exist"





	The Des Moines Public Library - October 7, 2003

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scarredsodeep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/gifts).



> Lucky for all you curious people, scarredsodeep wanted to know what happened in the library too, so I wrote it down for her. 
> 
> And I'm posting today in the hopes that everyone will forgive me for posting late next week as I will be spending most of Tuesday in transit home from the Wrigley show. :D (This may not actually help, but it's the best I can do.)
> 
> You will need to have read Chapter 1 of Somewhere You Exist for this to make any kind of sense.

The Des Moines Public Library at eleven o’clock in the morning is quiet and smells of old books. The computer section is in a back corner of the second floor under the observation of the special collections librarian (according to the nameplate on the desk). There are two other people making use of the twelve workstations. A girl can barely be seen behind her stack of books, and the other person is buried in a sweatshirt with a deep hood with only their hands to indicate it is another human being.

Andy picks a station as far from them both as possible. 

Pete appears around the corner of the nearest set of shelves a minute later with an armful of books and two pair of headphones. They’d decided it would be faster to split up the list of books on magic Andy had found in the catalog.

There’s only about a dozen, which is honestly about eleven more than Andy was expecting from the Des Moines Public Library, but giving Pete something to do helps distract from the panicking.

“Here.” Pete hands him the headphones. “I thought you might want to hear videos as well as see them.”

“Thanks.” If Pete’s being surprisingly thoughtful, he must be feeling a little better. “Why don’t you go through those and see what you can find about reversing spells while I try to hunt down not-us.”

Pete groans too loudly for the librarian’s taste as he settles into the seat one spot over. “Do you really think we’re going to find something?”

“Can’t hurt to look.”

He ignores Pete’s fidgeting and sighing while he scours what this place calls the internet for any mention of Coral Fixation and its members. There isn’t much; they’re not that well-known of a band. He scribbles a few notes down on a scrap piece of paper from a pile in the middle of the table, but even with his sprawling handwriting, it doesn’t take up the whole page.

Facts exhausted, he plugs in one set of headphones and goes looking for videos. The first one he finds is pretty shitty, so blurry from the lights that you can barely make out the people on the stage. The audio isn’t a whole lot better. But the crowd seems into it, and that’s fairly impressive.

The second video is better. “Rick” is set up farther forward on the stage than Patrick likes to be, barely behind the monitors. The rest of the band looks like they’re lined up in a row behind him, but he’s paying them no attention whatsoever. Rick sounds like Patrick, not surprisingly, but with an edge that he’s having trouble putting his finger on.

After about half a song, Pete leans over his shoulder. “What’d you find?”

He gestures at the screen and passes over the headphones. 

And then Rick slides his guitar around to his back and does this shimmy/wiggle/thing against his mic stand, back and forth and then down and back up like some kind of pole dancer. 

Andy blinks an extra couple of times. Pete promptly chokes.

On screen, Rick yanks the mic from the stand and prowls along the front of the stage with it, leaning towards the crowd, almost close enough to touch but staying just barely out of reach. His facial expressions are nearly impossible to make out, but it’s distinctly possible he’s leering at the audience.

Over Andy’s shoulder, Pete is just shy of hyperventilating.

The prowling continues for at least a verse, and then Rick stops and leans a little further out, towards someone specific. The camera angle is isn’t great-- Then the angle shifts, and yeah, that’s definitely a guy he’s probably-not-maybe going to kiss.

Andy can’t feel his arm anymore because Pete is digging his fingers in so tight.

Rick backs away from the guy in the crowd with a laugh, strutting his way across the stage towards -- oh no, shit shit  _ shit _ \-- his bass player, one Peter Williams. The video quality lets them down with the facial expressions again, but it’s not like there’s a lot of time to read Peter’s expression before Rick dips him like an Argentine tango and kisses the shit out of him.

Pete drops the headphones on the desk and sits down very abruptly on the floor, since there isn’t a chair close enough. Andy watches him for a second, but he looks like he’s breathing mostly right.

He looks back at the screen, but the video has ended. That’s probably for the best.

On the floor at his feet, Pete’s breathing has gone from the tempo of Reinventing the Wheel to It’s Not A Side Effect of the Cocaine; he’s not going to die, so Andy puts the headphones on and watches another five videos. Rick never goes near Peter in any of them.

He unplugs the headphones and closes down everything.

Pete is still on the floor.

“Are you gonna be okay, dude?”

“Andy, it’s-- it’s not fair.”

“I know, buddy. I know.”

Andy’s not sure what Pete’s thinking during the several minutes they sit in silence, but he suspects it’s similar to his own thoughts. He doesn’t know what exactly Pete was trying to achieve with this spell thing, but he has some suspicions. And he’s right; it isn’t fair to show him that something he wants so badly is a possibility here, even if it’s just for someone who looks like him. 

They’ve got to figure out how to go home before anything worse happens.

 


End file.
